The Future of Food to 2030 Results from the International Model for Policy Analysis of Agricultural Commodities and Trade (IMPACT) illustrate how socioeconomic and demographic changes play out in the medium- to long-term evolution of food consumption for key commodity groups. IMPACT is a partial equilibrium agricultural model for crop and livestock commodities; it was developed by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) to project global food supply, food demand, and food security to the year 2020 and beyond (Rosegrant et al. 2001; Rosegrant, Cai, and Cline 2002). Drawing on the IMPACT results, we can examine an alternative set of scenarios that illustrate the implications of changes toward less meat-intensive diets on market dynamics and nutritional outcomes.

Alternative Diet Scenarios We look at two alternative scenarios in which the consumption pathway toward key food commodities in the IMPACT baseline case is altered to reflect the evolution toward “low-meat” diets in high-income countries (which, in these scenarios, means all Organisation for Economic Co-operation [OECD] countries and other countries as defined by the World Bank [2007]). In the first scenario variant—low meat (LM)— the per capita intake of red meat (beef and lamb) and white meat (poultry and pork) is decreased by half in high-income countries over the projection period, which reflects a change in consumer preferences toward greener diets with lower environmental impact. The second scenario extends this variant to include Brazil and China (LMBC). In the longer background paper that this chapter is based on, we use cross-section data to discuss how the reduction of meat consumption compares to trends seen across higher-income regions. The scenarios implement the time period for diet adjustments so that changes begin in 2010 and are complete by 2015, outlining a relatively rapid period of transition. While we cannot elaborate on the details of policy mechanisms that would lead the countries’ consumers to adopt alternative diets within the space of this short chapter, we highlight the implications of these diet changes in a way that is relevant to policymakers. With the implementation of the LM scenario, the per capita consumption of

high-income countries is halved (relative to the baseline) by 2030, whereas the con- sumption level in developing countries rises, on average, by more than 7 percent to just above 27 kilograms per capita per year. When we also reduce meat consumption in China and Brazil, the consumption levels for Africa and India each increase by another 46 and 48 percent, respectively, bringing the average per capita value for all developing countries (minus China and Brazil) up by nearly 7 kilograms per capita per year. Table 1 shows the price changes that accompany these shifts in per capita consumption. It also shows strong decreases for the 2030 prices of livestock